Does information management exist outside London?
Jinfo Blog

By Dale Moore

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Information management positions seem not to exist visibly outside London. Try looking for advertised jobs using any decent aggregator using terms such as Information Manager, Content Manager (or even Knowledge Manager), limiting by region or county, and you'll see what I mean. For example, have a quick look on Jinfo Jobs and click on any of the UK Region filters. Interesting isn't it? 

Well, there are one or two, but the vast majority are firmly based in or near the capital. There are hardly ever any in the South West. Why is this? And is it the same in other countries? I suspect it probably is if surveys are anything to go by (AIIM State of the ECM Industry Report).

Perhaps this is because there aren't too many large organisations outside the capital (or major cities). Maybe it's because the profit margins are much smaller or information management simply isn't considered a priority compared to other organisational functions. I suspect the main reason though is that most smaller businesses (SMEs i.e. business employing less than 250 people) simply don't know what information management is or how it could benefit smaller organisations. 

Having spoken to several SMEs about this, it seems there are a number of different attitudes:

1. Where it does exist in some form, it’s usually as an addition to someone else’s role and is handled half-heartedly or incompetently due to lack of training or experience. 
2. Where it doesn’t exist at all, companies just muddle through as they’ve always done with a "well, we’ve come this far without it, why do we need it now?" attitude. 
3. The role is divided among several people or teams who don’t usually talk to each other as they can’t see the dots that need to be joined.
4. It’s seen as an IT function (though interestingly, they’re the only people in the organisation who don’t see it as their role!).

There are of course two sides to information work. There’s the information, content and knowledge capital that needs to be managed within the organisation, e.g. the stuff people produce, the stuff they know and stuff they do (content, knowledge and processes). And there’s the stuff going on outside the organisation that people inside the organisation need to know about (information subscriptions and research activities). 

I fully appreciate that one has to start small if one is going to take on anything resembling an information management role within a small organisation, but I believe it can, and should, at least be attempted. 

As a newly appointed Information Manager of a small business (outside London!), I hope to explore some of these issues in more detail.

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